Hantise de la guerre civile en France en 1873 : frères d’armes plutôt que frères ennemis au théâtre
France Haunted by the Civil War in 1873: Plays about Brothers in Arms Rather than Enemy Brothers

Summary/Abstract: In 1873, Catulle Mendès with Frères d’armes and Alexandre Dumas fils with La Femme de Claude put on the Parisian stage a plot in which two brothers become rivals because of a woman’s jealousy, thus risking death by killing each other and, even more importantly, their nation’s destruction. Since, at that time, France had just lost the war against Prussia, which was followed by a civil war, La Commune, the conflict between fictional brothers has to be read both as a metaphor and a warning. Therefore, the two authors deprive their respective plays of a dynamic motivation in favour of the ideological argument, making them somewhat too virtuous in order to be efficient.

• Details
• Contents